Succulents and More™

This is the continuation of my post about Bay Area artist Mat McGrath’s garden. Click here to see the front yard the way it looks right now, in late July 2026. I already showed you the photo below in part 1 , but it’s a great visual aid for orientation. The front yard is to the left of driveway, the slope on the right, and the back yard behind the van. To help you visualize where the different areas in the back yard are located, here’s the 2021 listing photo that shows what the property looked like when Mat and Mali bought it. Each area in question is circled in yellow. Just a couple of photos of the slope above the driveway (circled in yellow above): The next area is right behind the gate: The back yard has a multi-level terraced retaining wall on one side (on the right in the photos below). This gives Mat and Mali extra space — a lot of extra space. The planting area at ground level has gone through some significant changes. Mat has removed most of the soft-leaved succulents that u...

Bay Area-based artist Mat McGrath ( Farallon Gardens ) and his wife Mali moved to the East Bay town of Rodeo in the fall of 2021. The 14,000 sq. ft. property they bought was a blank slate: a bit of lawn and lots of bark mulch and dry grass. Undaunted and with help from Mat’s crew, they immediately went to work and created a spectacular garden. I’ve been following and documenting their progress since June 2023 (see links at the end of this post) and recently had the opportunity to see what the garden looks like at age 4½. As before, I’ll break up my post into two parts: front yard and back yard. Let’s start on the sidewalk. The difference between Mat’s front yard and the neighbor’s couldn’t be more stark: Many words come to mind when you look at the plantings. Minimalist is not one of them. Neither is subdued: Vibrant, cheerful, full of life: that’s more like it. Slope on the right, driveway in the middle, front garden proper on the left: Notice the license plate on Mat’s van! More is ...